Can Social Media Act as a Platform for Counter Hegemony - Research Paper Example

? The role played by social media during the Egyptian revolution Introduction The Egyptian revolution wasan incredible accomplishment by its citizens and an extremely inspiring indication of power of peaceful demonstrations or protest. However, the work towards an efficient shift to a democratic government in Egypt has just commenced. Nevertheless, the debate still dominates in the blogosphere regarding the primary role performed by mass media in the uprising. Some scholars argue that social media acted as both an accelerant and a spark for the revolution. Social media channels did not cause uprising but played a significant role in sharing information. This paper seeks to discuss the primary role performed by social media during the 2011 Egyptian revolution (Attia, Assaf, El, Kaldas, Mo, & El-Shazly, 2011). It will explore the question whether the social media acted as a platform for counter hegemony. Finally, it will analyze theories discussing the linkage between social media and power, and how social media challenged the authority of Mubarak. Discussion Social media acts as the XXI century pamphlet, a way that individuals who are frustrated and unsatisfied with the status quo can plan and organize themselves and stage or coordinate protest. There are various theories that discuss the relationship between social media and power, for example, Antonio Gramsci and Marxism theory. Hegemony is a term that emanated from Karl Marx writing. It was intellectualized by a Marxist social philosopher, Antonio Gramsci, who lived in Italy. Gramsci subscribed to Marxist idea of the historical dialectic. This implies that based on the classic Marxist theories, communities or societies must change over time from oppressive systems of the economy to highly liberating ones till the society finally attains the Utopian communism state (Sowers & Toensing, 2012). Marx asserted that capitalism was a subordinate system of economy because of the unequal wealth and power distribution among the few powerful individuals. Moreover, he argued that ultimately, the capitalism would be overthrown by the masses and shift to the system that is less oppressive. Gramsci employs “hegemony” to theorize the fundamental condition for effective overthrow of both the powerful (bourgeoisie) by the proletariat (ruled) and its allies (for instance, the peasantry), and the bourgeois power structures in the Western European states during XIX and XX century. Gramsci’s “hegemony” is the process of intellectual and moral leadership in which subordinate or dominated classes of post 1870 Western European industrial nations consent to their own suppression by the powerful classes, rather than being coerced or forced into accepting inferior ranks. According to Gramsci, hegemony is a form of control practiced by a dominant or powerful group. In the Marxist idea of a group dominating production means; Gramsci uses “essential group” to represent the “ruling class” (Terryn, 2011). For him, the Western European nations dominant class represented the bourgeoisie, who according to the Communist Manifesto are “the class or group of modern Capitalists, wage labour employers and the owners social production means, whereas, the vital subordinate class represented the proletariat, “the group of modern wage-laborers, without means personal production means, and thus, must sell their labour power to survive. Gramsci’s hegemony use can only be realized in the light of some of the concepts he established and those of the Civil Society and the state. Gramsci argues that media promotes powerful or dominant powers structures in his broadly used hegemony theory. In media studies, the term hegemony is defined as ways in which media motivates individuals to consent to the status quo structures of power. In the case of the Egyptian revolution, Gramsci and Marxism theory reveals that the authoritarian leadership did their best to block and cut Internet access by the mass. Unfortunately, despite their efforts, posters still had their way to convey information regarding the Egyptian revolution (Clow & Clow, 2011). Numerous literature report social media like Facebook, Twitter, video sharing sites like You Tube were the primary, global source of real-time information on Egypt’s developments. Protesters used such websites together with text messages and emails to spread information and coordinate their efforts. Manufacturing consent theory concentrates on the extent to which the content of social media conforms to frames and agendas of focus of the government officials, who are conceptualized as government executive members. For example, Ginat (2011) analyzes the divergent media activist framing of the Mubarak regime before and during the 2011 Egyptian revolution using social networks such as Twitter, Facebook and media news. The theory maintains that economic and political positioning of key news media institution causes a situation in which media news accounts seem to support dominant views or perspectives. The theory emphasizes on government’s authority to influence journalists’ output and tendency to both perceive and self-censor events through the political and cultural prisms, of their respective social and political elites. According to Ghonim (2012), overall media and social network coverage was persistent with the policy interests and views of the respective Egyptian administrations. Through online sources, specifically Twitter, the Egyptian uprising was highly accelerated. In addition, the government of Mubarak tried to use social media and others as propaganda and intelligence to cause unrest to the society. Media dependency theory came about because of the need to combine the finding of the entire body of media impacts research that had been conducted that point. Grondah and Mohyeldin (2011) propose that media dependency theory concentrates on the interplay between larger society and media system. According to the theory, media do not exist in a mere vacuum. It indicates that the ultimate premises of media impacts lie in the role of the media in that system, and the relationship of the audience to the media. Moreover, media development theory concludes that the possibility for the mass media text messages to attain a wide range of cognitive, behavioral and effective impacts will be enhanced when the systems of media serve central and unique information delivery purposes. The potential will be additionally enhanced where there is an increased level of the structural instability in the community, because of change and conflict. In addition, it is fundamental to note that changing audience effective, behavioral and cognitive conditions can result to changes in both the media and society. It is clear the social media networks performed a crucial role in the Egyptian latest uprising. Similar to Tunisians before them, protesters in Egypt participated in gathering and disseminating information directly from the source, or field. The armies of protesters were well equipped with the tools that made them qualified as reporters capturing pictures form the scenes, uploading and sending them via the social networks, updating and posting comments concerning the latest development on the (field) streets, and providing the public with the most uncensored and raw version recent occurrences on the ground. Journalists together with the protesters sent live updates and uploads concerning the protests through micro-blogging websites such as Facebook and Twitter. The degree of reporting is a fact that traditional media channels and systems of the nation cannot compete with, considering the rate at which the information is spreading and finding its access the internet via computers and smartphones of the parties involved in this historic Egyptian revolution (Fahmy, Al, & El-Baz, 2011). Social media, in most cases, exposed events that the mainstream media neglected. For example, posts of police brutality among others. Disturbing and devastating videos of brutal and inhumane treatment of the protesters by the law enforcement members and police were shared through the Internet disseminating the facts from the epicenter of protests in Egypt (Fahmy, 2011). The viral nature of such videos and incredible speed and volume in which such news of the events and happenings in Egypt became accessible to the general public across the borders of the country is what forced Egyptian authorities and powers to attempt and control the use of the social media and trying to block the Internet completely. Empowered with the tools of news media, Egyptian regime opponents precipitated the revolution which president Mubarak viewed as a huge challenge and threat, and reacted by blocking Internet communication and attempting to deactivate all mobile towers. With the cutoff of all primary service Internet providers, Egyptians resorted to older and increasingly slower technologies to maintain their communication and began to use dial-up Internet and fax machine connections (Ginat, 2011). In response to network blockage, search giant, Google, as well as major micro-blogging site, Twitter, decided to team up to create a service that would necessitate the Egyptians to send twitter messages and information by leaving a voice mail on a certain number (Ghonim, 2012). This implied that they would still be allowed to tweet messages without using the Internet connections. The search Google utilizes Google speech-to-text realization to transfer a message left on the controller number, which will be later send on Twitter. Another attempt to restrict and censor information concerning the protest in Egypt was the closure of the Pan-Arab Broadcaster, known as Al-Jazeera, by the government of Egypt. This was aimed at censoring information concerning the protest and controlling the dissemination of information. Al-Jazeera had endlessly reported on the revolution in opposition of the regime of the president of Egypt Hosni Mubarak. It was also criticized by many government supporters as being responsible for additional tension of the public. According to the media dependency theory, the entire society depended on media sources to disseminate information about the latest updates of the uprising. Irrespective of the senior (ruling) class effort to dominate and control the ruled class (protesters), the protesters persistent, sought for an alternative, to ensure steady and continuous spread of information. As Gramsci would argue, blocking of the Internet sources by the government officials was a form of control to suppress the lower class protesters, and impose their leadership and authority over them, (Shahin, 2011). Another form of control is observed when a diplomatic car ran over pre-democratic protesters. This incident led to death of thousands. The mainstream media manipulated and controlled by the ruling class did not report the incident. This led consequent expose by the social media (Grondahl & Mohyeldin, 2011). Also, mass mobilization of people, in response to the incidence, led to crippling of the tourism industry in Egypt and the resulting crash in of stock markets, as an effort to end the 30-year president Mubarak’s reign. Several scholars and theorists criticized Gramsci and Marxist theory as being oppressive and capitalist manipulated. Some believe that the theory reinforced capitalism and oppression of the poor (the ruled) in the society. The Egyptian government manipulated and wooed some of journalists in the mainstream media to their support. Such journalists were biased in capturing and reporting the cases concerning the uprising, and in most cases tended to bend to the side of the ruling class. They blamed the social media for the Egyptian uprising. Media dependency theorists assert that social media did not cause the uprising, but it played a fundamental role in linking many citizens and audience who would later join the protests. Twitter and Facebook teams such as “We Are All Khalid Said” formed at the end of 2010 in honor of a young Alexandrian man tortured to death by Egyptian police and boasting about half-million members that a current expression has found its way to Egyptian lexicon. Social media mobilized masses online to strike and protest against the Mubarak regime. The decision of the regime to interfere with the telecommunication measures was an effort to enforce the decision of the regime (In Toensing, 2011). The exposure of vital information concerning the regime and general uprising using the social media presented a huge challenge to President Mubarak. Together with his supporters, Mubarak issued orders to telecom operators to reduce the data rates limits. This led to network shut down disabling of text messages and total deactivation of cell phone coverage. Vodafone officials decided to follow Egyptian government shutdown orders; this gave the authorities wide emergency powers. Also, organizers were highly concerned, in all cases, by the prospect that intelligence and security agents would infiltrate or control social media networks. In addition, on January 28, a number of instructions for the protests were introduced with a numbers of warnings. For example, they were to distribute messages by hand (photocopies or printouts) or e-mail. Twitter and Facebook were put under surveillance. Protesters were urged to keep the information from the hand of the state security personnel or the police (Khalil, 2011). The uprising was highly challenging for President Mubarak regime because he feared being overthrown by the protesters and the general public if the corrupt deals and mistreatment of the protesters were to be exposed through the social networks (Rushdy & Hatem, 2011). After about 18 days of tumultuous demonstrations and stubborn refusal to quit the position he maintained for about 30 years, President Mubarak gave up his power, handing over power to the country’s military leaders. At the time of social and political unrest, Egypt was disabled from the (social media) Internet for a number of days, sites of social network such as Twitter, email, Facebook which served at fundamental tools for the citizen and the public to topple their long-time leader. Mubarak would not have left the office during this time if it were not for the effective social networking tools. Their attempt to disconnect the Internet was aimed at turning all the protesters eyes far away from the revolution and allow his regime to reign, but the internet crackdown failed and instead accelerated the uprising, bringing more challenges to the regime (Middle East Research and Information Project, 2011). As a result of this, Mubarak and his team felt that they had no any other alternative but to withdraw for a new regime to take office. Even, though, protesters faced violence and brutality from the police and tumultuous and infamous regime, many sections of the uprising were peaceful. They managed to mobilize the public and audience from different parts to join them in the uprising against the culture of impunity and oppression imposed on them, by the government. They also succeeded to end the governmental influence on the mainstream media especially in matters concerning the reporting of uprising cases (Attia, Assaf, Kaldas, & El-Shazly, 2011). In the unpredictable and tense days between 28th January and 11th February when President Mubarak resigned the mood of the Egyptian TV-watching, public veered from protesters demands support to crave to go back to empathy with the pestered Mubarak, and back again. To some extent the famous contest of wills among a spontaneous, grassroots uprising and an entrenched, powerful or authoritarian regime turned out to be a battle of images and words, in which national authenticity issues were imperative and communication a necessity. The government and protesters debated about who could or could not legitimately claim to talk for Egypt, through different means. For example, the protesters using peer-to-peer, free-wheeling especially digital networks, while the government used top-down announcements via channels over which they maintained exclusive control. The government, during the Egyptian uprising, blocked the use of information and communication networks such as TV, newspapers, Twitter, the Internet and cellular phone services in a bid to forcefully woe the public to their support. They also used state information and communication apparatus to convey propaganda against the journalist covering protesters and protesters on the movement (Sowers & Toensing, 2012). Conclusion The protesters communicated their information in a creative, submissive and disciplined manner using social media tools. In this way, social media succeeded in forming a counter hegemony in Egypt during the 2011 uprising. This led to triumph of the uprising that was aimed at the resignation of President Mubarak (Clow, 2011). The triumph was accompanied by flourishing of social homemade media of all types, discrediting of news that are government-controlled and validation of outlets like Al-Jazeera and other related pugnacious satellite channels, both private and public owned. The end of Mubarak regime marked the crucial role played by the social media as an effective tool of countering Hegemony in Egypt. References Attia, O., Assaf, S., El, D. R. K., Kaldas, T., Mo, Z., & El-Shazly, M. (2011). The road to Tahrir: Front line images by six young Egyptian photographers. Cairo: The American University in Cairo Press. Clow, B. H., & Clow, C. C. (2011). Awakening the planetary mind: Beyond the trauma of the past to a new era of creativity. Rochester, VT: Bear and Company. Fahmy, M. F., Al, T. S., & El-Baz, F. (2011). Egyptian freedom story: 25th of January revolution: a photo documentary. Cairo: Mediaworx. Fahmy, Z. (2011). Ordinary Egyptians: Creating the modern nation through popular culture. 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